The Horse Road is the first novel in a trilogy by B.C. author Troon Harrison featuring female protagonists and horses, set against different historical backdrops.

In this instalment, Kallisto is a young girl growing up in the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia in 104 BC. Her father is a prosperous trader, and her mother is a nomad who teaches her how to ride, shoot a bow and arrow, and perform tricks on horseback. When the reader meets Kallisto, she is racing a magnificent stallion called Gryphon, but her personal horse, a white mare named Swan, is at the centre of this tale.

Harrison bases the story on historical fact, with Kallisto’s valley being invaded by the Chinese, who are intent on procuring the wonderful Persian horses bred in the area. When Ferghana is besieged, Swan is taken, and the bulk of the novel outlines Kallisto’s attempts to retrieve her precious horse.

The novel is well researched, but the impressive historical detail occasionally gets in the way of the narrative flow. Kallisto’s first-person narration moves along breathlessly, detailing a rapid-fire succession of events. The first two chapters alone contain a horse race, a missing friend, a search for an eagle’s nest, the arrival of the Chinese army, and an attack by a snow leopard.

While Kallisto is a strong female protagonist, most of the other characters have less personality than the horses. Harrison’s prose is lush but clichéd – horses always soar, silences are deafening, eyes are deep pools. Metaphors and similes are inserted for effect rather than clarity. A moment’s silence is “pulled taut as a piece of horsehair on a two-stringed guitar,” and shyness overcomes Kallisto “like a stray dog seizing a hen.”

The Horse Road is a solid, though not exceptional, entry in a sub-genre aimed at horse-loving tweens.